Tag Archives: young adult

I picked this book up at the library on a whim – I’ve read Carrie Vaughn’s entire Kitty Norville series and really like them. I hope hope, fingers crossed, that this book is the start of a new series.

This book is about seventeen year old Kay Wyatt who lives in a border town with her father, Sheriff Wyatt and her mother, a member of the FBBE (Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement). She loves to spend time hiking and climbing the cliffs near the border. One afternoon she finishes her climb and stops at the creek to rinse off. She slips and falls in, and is saved by a dragon from the other side of the border. The dragons haven’t been seen much in the last 60 years since a treaty was reached between the dragons and humans. At the risk of being punished, or causing political upset, they become friends and continue to meet.

The first chapter grabbed me about four pages in.

“The rock must have had a wet spot, or she hit a crumbly piece of boulder – gravel instead of stone, it slid instead of holding her foot. Yelping, she toppled over and rolled into the creek.

The chill water shocked her sweaty, overheated body, and at first she could only freeze, numb and sputtering, hoping to keep her head above water. The current carried her. These mountain creeks were always deeper and faster moving than they looked, and she tumbled, dragged by the water, buffeted by rocks. When she finally started flailing, struggling to find something, anything, she could grab to stop her progress, she found nothing. Her hands kept slipping off mossy rocks or splashing against the current. She’d always discounted the idea of someone drowning after getting swept away in one of these creeks, when they could just put their feet down and stand up. But she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her. The current kept snatching her, turning her, dunking her. she was already exhausted from her climb, and now this.

When something grabbed at her, she clung to it. A log, some kind of debris fallen into the creek. That was what she though. But her hands didn’t close on sodden bark or vegetation. The thing she’d washed up against was slick, almost like plastic, but warm and yielding. And it moved. It closed around her and pulled. Water filled her eyes; she couldn’t see. The world seemed to flip.

Then she washed up on dry land. She lay on solid, gritty earth and smelled dirt. She sepnt a long moment coughing her lungs out, heaving up water until she couldn’t cough anymore. Hunched over, learning how to breathe again, she got her first look around and realized she’d ended up on the north side of the creek. The wrong side of the border.

A deep, short growl echoed above her. She rolled over and looked up. she was in shadow, and a dragon hunched over her. A real dragon, close up.”

I really enjoyed this book, and hope there are more to come! I give it four stars out of five!